Pepita Seth was born in Suffolk in 1942. She studied film editing and gained opportunities to work under film directors like Ted Kotcheff and Stanley Donen. On finding the diary of her grandfather, she decided to trace his life with the British Army in India. She landed in Kolkata in 1970. She travelled from Kolkata to Guruvayur where she became fascinated by the temple arts and rituals of Kerala. For the next nine years, she visited Kerala several times and, in 1979, she settled in Guruvayur. Eventually the Guruvayur Devaswom Board allowed her access to the temple. She has published many books and articles on the temple arts and rituals. In recognition of her services to the fields of art and culture, the Government of India, in 2012, bestowed on her the civilian award of Padma Shri.
James Douglas Pearson was a British librarian and bibliographer in the field of Islamic studies who founded the Index Islamicus. He grew up in Cambridge, where he was also educated. His first job was as a book fetcher in the Cambridge University Library at the age of 16. He was awarded a scholarship for Hebrew at St John's College. graduating in 1936, and studied other languages such as Arabic and Persian. He worked in the Oriental Section of the Library until 1941 when he was enlisted for war service until 1945. He worked again in the same library as an assistant under-librarian from 1945 until 1950. During 1950, he was appointed as librarian of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. In 1972, Pearson was appointed as senior fellow and professor of bibliography in the University of London. He retired during 1979 and returned to Cambridge, to work on the Index Islamicus. In 1982, he retired from editorship, and handed responsibility of the Index Islamicus to Cambridge University.
In 1967, Pearson established the Middle East Libraries Committee, now known as MELCOM UK. This gave birth to a large series of bibliographies and research tools.